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Friday, December 19, 2014

This was going to be my 5th and I hope final
surgery on my left knee since a major injury way back in 1974. With much nervousness
I waited in the pre-surgery room. Waiting,
listening to every sound, wondering when
the party was going to start. The worry made every minute seem like 10 the
clock wasn’t moving. It was time to get this over with. Finally nurses entered
my room and wheeled me out and down the hallway.

The last recollection of consciousness that I have before my
knee replacement surgery was being wheeled into what looked like a large room
full of tools, lights, machines, and parts on tables. There were people moving
about totally covered in masks, goggles, gloves, and surgical garb. I was
looking for my doctor. Dr. David Field. I trusted him, I picked him to be the
one to cut my old knee out today and replace it with a mixture of alloys and
synthetic parts. He was nowhere to be seen. Was he here?

I could tell they must have put some sort of a sedative into my
IV drip. Everything became a dream in dream there was nothing to be worried
about any longer. The last thing I remember was a man leaned over and
introduced himself as my anesthetist and helped me up to sit and lean over some
device and place my chin into a cup to help support my leaning position. I knew
what he was going to do, he was going insert a syringe between two of my lower
vertebras and inject a solution into my lower spine that would totally deaden
everything on my body from that point down.I felt his fingers pushing very hard against my lower vertebras or was
it a syringe?

Then all lights, all consciousness left, the butchery started,
the saws, drills, scalpels, and trained handswent to work.

There was no time gap from that point to now. It seems
instantaneous I was laying in the recovery room. It is like waking up from a
strange dream, and then going in out of it for the next couple of hours. Slowly
the ‘outside world’ becomes the denominate reality. Now I remembered I had knee
replacement surgery.

I was wondering how it went as I watched blurry people walk
back and forth and talked to each other in words I could not quite understand
or could not quite hear. I closed my eyes again and left the room in my mind as
somebody shook my arm and called my name. “David” and said “Surgery went well
you are in the recovery room.”

I was now starting to think more then I was sleeping.
Looking around I could see digital readings on devices around my bed. There
were sensors attached to my body letting the medical staff know what was going
on inside of me. There was an IV bag dripping fluids into my body through a
needle that was taped to my left wrist. I had a catheter in place letting the
IV fluids drip back out.

I saw my two feet sticking out of the sheets, no matter how
hard I tried to move them, wiggle my toes, nothing moved.

I saw my lady, sitting next to me, that helped comfort me.

I reached under the covers and it felt like I was touching
somebody else, it wasn’t me there was no feelings to be felt.

Somehow the day drifted into the evening and evening drifted
into the night, I was now alone with my thoughts, listening to hospital sounds,
as I drifted in and out of sleep.

I was starting to feel restless, distressful, a spinal tap
stops pain totally, but unlike narcotic pain control does not give that calming
effect that has become a national addiction dilemma.I still could not move my legs much and I kept
trying to pull myself up, using my arms to try and sit up. Feelings and pain
started to show up in my left leg. My leg felt warm and sweaty I thought.

My automated Blood Pressure check started. It automatically
starts cuffing my arm every 15 minutes so if I did dose off it wakes me. My
blood pressure had been running alarming high, and I was told it was due the
pain and trauma involved with surgery.

This time it topped the charts with the high end being 175
which triggered an alarm at the nurse’s station. A nurse quickly arrives and
alarmingly notices there is blood on the edges of the mattress and pulls back
the covers we both see I am lying on a blood soaked mattress and my leg gauze
is also soaked in blood. A second nurse arrives and my leg wraps are rapidly
stripped off. Now we see the source of bleeding. In my moving around the two
tubes that were left inside my leg and attached to a pump to help drain excess
blood and fluids were pulled out. Blood was burping and one of the nurses
applied pressure again the holes in my leg to stop the bleeding.

Dance your own Dance

I have often heard, "Dance like nobody is watching"

I say, "Dance, like you don't care if anybody is watching."

Be yourself, be who you are do your own thing.

"That proves you are unusual,' returned the Scarecrow; 'and I am convinced that the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like the leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed."

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The world's shortest and happiest fairytale.

Once upon a time, a guy asked a girl, "Will you marry me?"

The girl said "NO!"

And the guy lived happily ever after, and bought lots of expensive bicycles, rode them for hours each day, left the toilet seat up, didn't take his shoes off, and drank lots of beer, and had loads of money, and farted whenever he wanted.